Download or read book Why I Am Not a Buddhist written by Evan Thompson and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-28 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A provocative essay challenging the idea of Buddhist exceptionalism, from one of the world's most widely respected philosophers and writers on Buddhism and science. Buddhism has become a uniquely favored religion in our modern age. A burgeoning number of books extol the scientifically proven benefits of meditation and mindfulness for everything ranging from business to romance. There are conferences, courses, and celebrities promoting the notion that Buddhism is spirituality for the rational; compatible with cutting-edge science; indeed, "a science of the mind." In this provocative book, Evan Thompson argues that this representation of Buddhism is false. In lucid and entertaining prose, Thompson dives deep into both Western and Buddhist philosophy to explain how the goals of science and religion are fundamentally different. Efforts to seek their unification are wrongheaded and promote mistaken ideas of both. He suggests cosmopolitanism instead, a worldview with deep roots in both Eastern and Western traditions. Smart, sympathetic, and intellectually ambitious, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in Buddhism's place in our world today."--Provided by publisher.

Download or read book Why Buddhism is True written by Robert Wright and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-08-08 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of America’s most brilliant writers, a New York Times bestselling journey through psychology, philosophy, and lots of meditation to show how Buddhism holds the key to moral clarity and enduring happiness. At the heart of Buddhism is a simple claim: The reason we suffer—and the reason we make other people suffer—is that we don’t see the world clearly. At the heart of Buddhist meditative practice is a radical promise: We can learn to see the world, including ourselves, more clearly and so gain a deep and morally valid happiness. In this “sublime” (The New Yorker), pathbreaking book, Robert Wright shows how taking this promise seriously can change your life—how it can loosen the grip of anxiety, regret, and hatred, and how it can deepen your appreciation of beauty and of other people. He also shows why this transformation works, drawing on the latest in neuroscience and psychology, and armed with an acute understanding of human evolution. This book is the culmination of a personal journey that began with Wright’s landmark book on evolutionary psychology, The Moral Animal, and deepened as he immersed himself in meditative practice and conversed with some of the world’s most skilled meditators. The result is a story that is “provocative, informative and...deeply rewarding” (The New York Times Book Review), and as entertaining as it is illuminating. Written with the wit, clarity, and grace for which Wright is famous, Why Buddhism Is True lays the foundation for a spiritual life in a secular age and shows how, in a time of technological distraction and social division, we can save ourselves from ourselves, both as individuals and as a species.

Download or read book Smile of the Buddha written by Jacquelynn Baas and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The relations between eastern and western cultures have long been a neglected topic, and this careful and intelligent look at a small but significant part of those relations is most welcome."--Thomas McEvilley, author of The Shape of Ancient Thought "How wonderful that Jacquelynn Baas has seen the light of the Buddha's smile shining from faraway Asia into the realm of the art of modern times in what we think of as the West! . . . Her work reveals how some of our most influential artists explored and expressed the sophisticated perceptions and joyful energy emanating from the realm of Buddhist Asia."--Robert A. F. Thurman "As a Buddhist scholar and artist I welcome this thoughtful and richly detailed study of how many aspects of Buddhism have stimulated, invigorated, and enriched Western arts over the past 150 years."--Stephen Addiss, author of The Art of Zen "A crucial contribution to modern art studies, this high-spirited text surveys Western artists awakened by the wisdom of the East, from Monet and Duchamp to O'Keeffe to Martin. It is a thoughtful book about thoughtful artists, their values and their visions, with a lot to offer general readers and specialists alike."--Charles Stuckey, Associate Professor of Art History at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Download or read book The Gospel of Buddha written by Paul Carus and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2010-08-07 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Gospel of Buddha According to Old Records told by Paul Carus. Modeled on the New Testament and tells the story of Buddha through parables. It was an important tool in introducing Buddhism to the west and is used as a teaching tool by some Asian sects. Reproduction of 1894 Edition.

Download or read book The Gospel of Buddha According to Old Records written by Paul Carus and published by Open Court Publishing. This book was released on 2004 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Gospel of Buddha, the classic text on Buddhism that first introduced many Westerners to Buddha and his teachings, was first published in 1894 and immediately became a worldwide bestseller. Author Paul Carus (1852-1919) collected many accounts of Buddha's life, teachings, and death, and fashioned a coherent and gripping narrative. It was easily understood and popular with Americans because it resembled a Christian gospel. Martin Verhoeven's detailed introduction describes the circumstances surrounding Carus's achievement, and the book's relation to other strands of Buddhist teaching. This edition also includes 25 newly rediscovered paintings by the renowned Buddhist artist Yamada.

Download or read book The Scientific Buddha written by Donald S. Lopez and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2012-09-25 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book tells the story of the Scientific Buddha, "born" in Europe in the 1800s but commonly confused with the Buddha born in India 2,500 years ago. The Scientific Buddha was sent into battle against Christian missionaries, who were proclaiming across Asia that Buddhism was a form of superstition. He proved the missionaries wrong, teaching a dharma that was in harmony with modern science. And his influence continues. Today his teaching of "mindfulness" is heralded as the cure for all manner of maladies, from depression to high blood pressure. In this potent critique, a well-known chronicler of the West's encounter with Buddhism demonstrates how the Scientific Buddha's teachings deviate in crucial ways from those of the far older Buddha of ancient India. Donald Lopez shows that the Western focus on the Scientific Buddha threatens to bleach Buddhism of its vibrancy, complexity, and power, even as the superficial focus on "mindfulness" turns Buddhism into merely the latest self-help movement. The Scientific Buddha has served his purpose, Lopez argues. It is now time for him to pass into nirvana. This is not to say, however, that the teachings of the ancient Buddha must be dismissed as mere cultural artifacts. They continue to present a potent challenge, even to our modern world.

Download or read book Greek Buddha written by Christopher I. Beckwith and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-28 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a history of early Buddhism based solely on dateable artefacts and archaeology rather than received tradition, much of which data is provided by studying Pyrrho's history

Download or read book The Buddha s Footprint written by Johan Elverskog and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2020-02-21 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A corrective to the contemporary idea that Buddhism has always been an environmentally friendly religion In the current popular imagination, Buddhism is often understood to be a religion intrinsically concerned with the environment. The Dharma, the name given to Buddhist teachings by Buddhists, states that all things are interconnected. Therefore, Buddhists are perceived as extending compassion beyond people and animals to include plants and the earth itself out of a concern for the total living environment. In The Buddha's Footprint, Johan Elverskog contends that only by jettisoning this contemporary image of Buddhism as a purely ascetic and apolitical tradition of contemplation can we see the true nature of the Dharma. According to Elverskog, Buddhism is, in fact, an expansive religious and political system premised on generating wealth through the exploitation of natural resources. Elverskog surveys the expansion of Buddhism across Asia in the period between 500 BCE and 1500 CE, when Buddhist institutions were built from Iran and Azerbaijan in the west, to Kazakhstan and Siberia in the north, Japan in the east, and Sri Lanka and Indonesia in the south. He examines the prosperity theology at the heart of the Dharma that declared riches to be a sign of good karma and the means by which spritiual status could be elevated through donations bequeathed to Buddhist institutions. He demonstrates how this scriptural tradition propelled Buddhists to seek wealth and power across Asia and to exploit both the people and the environment. Elverskog shows the ways in which Buddhist expansion not only entailed the displacement of local gods and myths with those of the Dharma—as was the case with Christianity and Islam—but also involved fundamentally transforming earlier social and political structures and networks of economic exchange. The Buddha's Footprint argues that the institutionalization of the Dharma was intimately connected to agricultural expansion, resource extraction, deforestation, urbanization, and the monumentalization of Buddhism itself.

Download or read book Curators of the Buddha written by Donald S. Lopez Jr. and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1995-08-15 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A critical history of the study of Buddhism in the West, incorporating insights of colonial and post-colonial cultural studies. Social, political and cultural conditions that have shaped the course of Buddhist studies are discussed.

Download or read book The Dhammapada written by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and published by Pilgrims. This book was released on 2007-06-30 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Dhammapada is perhaps the only Buddhist scripture which contains the actual words of the Buddha. Divided into twenty six chapters, the Dhammapada is a collection of 423 verses of Buddhas wisdom and moral philosophy.

Download or read book Buddhist Theology written by Roger Reid Jackson and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars of Buddhism, themselves Buddhist, here seek to apply the critical tools of the academy to reassess the truth and transformative value of their tradition in its relevance to the contemporary world.

Download or read book Scholars and Prophets written by Roland Lardinois and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-07-14 with total page 575 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- Introduction -- Prologue -- Part I Genesis of a Learned Milieu -- 1. The conquest of scholarly legitimacy -- 2. Orientalism and prophetic discourse -- 3. The struggle for institutional autonomy -- Part II Scholars and Prophets -- 4. The field of production of discourses on India -- 5. Scholarly practice -- 6. Prophetic Logic -- 7. Study of Hinduism as a disciplinary issue -- Part III Social Science and Indigenous Science -- 8. Louis Dumont and the Brahmanical science -- 9. Louis Dumont and the cunning of reason -- 10. The avatars of scholarship on India -- Conclusion: Sociology put to the test of India -- Postscript: Notes on the construction of a research subject -- Postface to the English-Language Edition -- Appendix. Multi Correspondence Analysis -- List of documents, tables and diagrams -- Sources and Bibliography -- General Index -- Names Index

Download or read book What the Buddha Thought written by Richard Francis Gombrich and published by Equinox Publishing (UK). This book was released on 2009 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that the Buddha was one of the most brilliant and original thinkers of all time. This book intends to serve as an introduction to the Buddha's thought, and hence even to Buddhism itself. It also argues that we can know far more about the Buddha than it is fashionable among scholars to admit.

Download or read book Mahayana Buddhism written by Paul Williams and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-07-11 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originating in India, Mahayana Buddhism spread across Asia, becoming the prevalent form of Buddhism in Tibet and East Asia. Over the last twenty-five years Western interest in Mahayana has increased considerably, reflected both in the quantity of scholarly material produced and in the attraction of Westerners towards Tibetan Buddhism and Zen. Paul Williams’ Mahayana Buddhism is widely regarded as the standard introduction to the field, used internationally for teaching and research and has been translated into several European and Asian languages. This new edition has been fully revised throughout in the light of the wealth of new studies and focuses on the religion’s diversity and richness. It includes much more material on China and Japan, with appropriate reference to Nepal, and for students who wish to carry their study further there is a much-expanded bibliography and extensive footnotes and cross-referencing. Everyone studying this important tradition will find Williams’ book the ideal companion to their studies.

Download or read book The Buddha before Buddhism written by Gil Fronsdal and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2016-11-29 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This easy-to-understand translation of one of the earliest surviving Buddhist texts offers a pathway to awakening that is simple, straightforward, and free of religious doctrine One of the earliest of all Buddhist texts, the Atthakavagga, or “Book of Eights,” is a remarkable document, not only because it comes from the earliest strain of the literature—before the Buddha, as the title suggests, came to be thought of as a “Buddhist”—but also because its approach to awakening is so simple and free of adherence to any kind of ideology. Instead the Atthakavagga points to a direct and simple approach for attaining peace without requiring the adherence to doctrine. The value of the teachings it contains is not in the profundity of their philosophy or in their authority as scripture; rather, the value is found in the results they bring to those who live by them. Instead of doctrines to be believed, the “Book of Eights” describes means or practices for realizing peace. Gil Fronsdal’s rigorous translation with commentary reveals the text to be of interest not only to Buddhists, but also to the ever-growing demographic of spiritual-but-not-religious, who seek a spiritual life outside the structures of religion.

Download or read book Passionate Enlightenment written by Miranda Shaw and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1995-10-08 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anyone who reads a Tantric text or enters a Tantric temple immediately encounters a pantheon of female Buddhas and a host of female enlighteners known as "dakinis," who dance and leap in joyous poses that communicate a sense of mastery and spiritual power. This striking female imagery is fully compatible with Shaw's findings. Drawing on interviews and archival research conducted during two years of fieldwork in India and Nepal, including more than forty previously unnoticed works by women of the Pala period (eighth through twelfth centuries C.E.), she substantially reinterprets the history of Tantric Buddhism during its first four centuries. In her view, the Tantric theory of this period promotes an ideal of cooperative, mutually liberative relationships between women and men while encouraging a sense of reliance on women as a source of spiritual insight and power.

Download or read book The Historical Buddha written by Hans Wolfgang Schumann and published by Motilal Banarsidass Publ.. This book was released on 2004 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No man has had a greater inflience on the spiritual development of his people than Siddartha Gautama. Born in India in the sixth century BC into a nation hungry for spiritual experience, he developed a religious and moral teaching that, to this day, brings comfort and peace to all who practise it. This comprehensive biography examines the social, religious and political conditions that gave rise to Buddhism as we now know it.